PHOTO CREDIT: C-Dog, from "The Dead Show" at Label Gallery, which was, I believe, in October, 2003. Seven YEARS AGO!!! I'm wearing a witches' hat and look kind of angry, but actually I'm having a really fun time. All/lots of us performed music that night (C-dog, JC, Andrina, José, me) , which was a sort of birth/re-birth of the Label as a music jam space and a space of magical incantations, and then Righteous Ike finished off the night at 3 in the morning.
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So, in looking over random posts from AlfA blog this morning (holy nostalgia!!!), I came across a post where C-Dog's brother Luis asked in the comments how my book was going.
"Good," I said. "Only a few more long days and then I start talking to publishers."
That was in February 2007.
I DID actually send the book out out at that point, received 13 rejections, and went back to the drawing board, even going so far as to move to a foreign country called Quebec in order to have all the time and space to finish it.
And NOW... NOW I think it's really actually finished. This weekend, I've been going through the 250 or so printed pages on which I've made detailed, line-by-line notes in pen, and am using those notes to do final revisions on my aging computer.
As some of you know, I got a job as managing editor of Concordia's literary publication, which is called Matrix Magazine. Everyone involved with the magazine assures me it's a much easier way to get a book published (through meeting writers, agents, editors, etc) than simply sending stuff out blindly in the mail like I did before.
I was telling Anita the other day that it's so STRANGE to suddenly be meeting and interacting with writers again. For so many years, I've been involved in a big, awesome, bustling, productive community of artists, musicians, and thinkers (that would be you people), but have known almost zero "writers" in the sense of people who have made it a vocation. It's really interesting to be meeting these people and seeing a different side of the art-y world again, even as I'm forever nostalgic for the old.
Excerpt from the book to follow later today...
finding your 'people' is always inspring - and so was/is this!
ReplyDeleteAppropriate pic for this post. Determination and confidence.
ReplyDeleteHa, I can relate to projects taking longer than expected to see fruition. I am contributing to a book right now, and keep telling the poor dude "just one more week, and I'll send you that file".
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading the excerpt.
1. Where's the excerpt?
ReplyDelete2. I humbly purport to make my living as a writer. Maybe not as a novelist or as a short story writer or as a poet, but nonetheless, as a writer.
3. Yet I get what you mean.
1-- The excerpt is coming, I promise. Tomorrow morning, let's say.
ReplyDelete2-- As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to call yourself a circus performer, astronaut, or underwater welder if you'd like. I've never been very protective of titles or people's right to claim them.
But yes, clearly you are a writer, as are many others on this blog.
My point was more specifically about people who work within my specific micro-discipline of the larger field of writing.
3-- Which i suppose you understood. And sorry I missed yr call tonight-- I was working at the resto.
ReplyDeletecongrats on the editor job!
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